Essay; Gambling Fever

At the age of 14, I was standing on a landing in the stairwell at Joan of Arc Junior High School in Manhattan, watching a crap game, when I felt the heavy hand of a teacher on my shoulder.

My protest that I didn't even have a bet down was unavailing; four of us, all seniors, were branded as gamblers. The shaming punishment: though permitted to be graduated, I was refused a place at commencement and denied a diploma.

That was back when gambling was viewed as wrong; when bookies and numbers racketeers were considered the scum of society; and when a lust for something-for-nothing was looked upon as a weakness of character.

Today, state-sponsored gambling is the national pastime. Nearly 100 million casino visitors, video gamblers and sports bettors wager close to a half-trillion dollars -- with $40 billion going to the "house."

And today, aboriginal Americans are exploiting those of us who followed in neon casinos on their reservations. The tribes are becoming a nation of croupiers, in league with national gambling interests, while pretending ill-gotten profits are used primarily to educate their children.

The "gaming industry" -- none of its pious proponents call it the gambling racket -- is the source of the greatest sustained, bipartisan political hypocrisy of our time.

Liberals, professing a horror of regressive taxation, turn a blind eye to the way state-sponsored gambling redistributes income upward, and how new casino permissions snatch welfare checks to fatten per-share earnings of casino stockholders.

Conservatives, ostensibly upholders of public morality, approve government advertising campaigns to entice citizens to gamble in lotteries and play the ponies at off-track betting parlors.

Gullible voters were sold this notion: since many people liked to gamble anyway, why not turn gambling's profits to public benefit?

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But the result is the gambling epidemic, with its associated money laundering by criminals, corruption of public officials and "cannibalization" of local economies. Thanks to the public blessing of gambling by government, the moral stigma was removed and the high roller has become a folk hero.

The media cannot escape their share of the blame. From the hysterical hype of the Publishers Clearing House to the front-page and prime-time publicity given sweepstakes winners (nobody covers the losers), we have glorified the pernicious philosophy of something-for-nothing.

Nothing is for nothing. Crime always goes hand-in-hand with gambling. Here in the relatively poor state of West Virginia, a former governor confessed to taking bribes from racetrack operators and a lottery director was jailed for rigging a video lottery contract. Disgusted, church groups recently leaned on legislators to reject riverboat gambling, and the pols suddenly realized that a pro-casino vote could be a loser.

Now the media are at last awakening. Gee-whiz stories touting the craze are out and hard reporting of the spreading addiction is in.

The Economist cast into doubt the claim that gambling salvages local economies. USA Today headlined: "Nation raising 'a generation of gamblers,' " focusing on the ring corrupting schools in suburban Nutley, N.J. The best reporting was in Sports Illustrated's detailed expose of the gambling addiction rampant in the nation's colleges.

But television news is still gambling's friend. With young gamblers relying heavily on the sports ticker that runs at the bottom of CNN's Headline News, that network has a special responsibility to show how the lives of many students are being ruined by the compulsion its ticker helps feed. A "Gambling is for suckers" crawl among the scores would do for starters.

Will the pols sense the coming voter revulsion at the "painless" revenue source that failed? Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia has introduced a bill to establish a "National Gambling Impact and Policy Commission"; let's see if the casino lobby can buy the votes to avert scrutiny and restigmatizing.

The yen to gamble is a personal weakness, but state-sponsored gambling is a banana-republic abomination that undermines national values. My gratitude goes to that tough teacher at Joan of Arc who stopped me before I started.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 10, 1995, on Page A00015 of the National edition with the headline: Essay; Gambling Fever. Today's Paper|Subscribe